In the past few years, there has been a significant rise in misleading notices directed to owners of trademark applications and registrations. Such misleading scams are solicitations often trying to get trademark owners to pay money for services that either do not exist or are unnecessary.

This fraudulent activity is, in part, the result of national trademark offices making their computerized databases publicly available online. Although having such databases available publicly serves an important need, unscrupulous parties are abusing the information. They are taking the ownership data from the online databases, and using that data to contact the owners of trademark applications and registrations, hoping that such owners will just pay money for bogus services they think are required.